During an instant messaging (IM) conversation with another individual or a group, the topic of scheduling a meeting often comes up. A common scenario that occurs during an IM session is that each of the chatting parties opens a separate calendaring system to check their current appointments. Each person opens his or her own calendaring system to look through various dates and times for available time slots. Each communicates his or her available time slots through text or audio input through each person's respective IM client.
As each individual in the group finds various openings and available time slots and communicates the openings and available time slots through their IM client, one of the individuals may act as a coordinator to coordinate the available times of each of the individuals. Alternatively, each individual may go through the text of the other users to try and find dates and times that work for everyone. Going through the text of each of the individuals often requires going back and forth between the IM client and the calendaring system, scrolling up and down through the IM text history, and checking the available time slots on the calendaring system. Of course, as the size of the group grows, the difficulty and complexity of coordinating and keeping track of each user's available time slots becomes more difficult. Additionally, at least one of the users may be communicating using an audio input option of the IM client. The coordinator must remember and/or write down the dates and times that work for each audio inputting user.
Clearly, coordinating a meeting time over an IM conversation is a time consuming process since each of the individual calendaring systems are viewable only by each user. Additionally, the search for mutually open times consumes time going back and forth between an IM client and a calendaring system.